Ever-present on the seven year old Michael's shoulder was his hatchling, Agalia, a tiny blue thing that seemed to be as surely attached to him as a beauty mark, this constant attachment being important for bonding dragons to their riders.
Dragons are fortunate in that they have an intermediate sex, of which Agalia was a member, and also align their physiology according to their gender, so rather than little drakes and hens growing up to be teased for being not quite like the sex they were born as, their bodies follow suit with their minds, sometimes producing an intersex creature called a "vixen." As hatchlings, vixens are more mischievous than hens but more taciturn than drakes, often having a wicked sense of humor and tending to find most anything to be very funny.
When Agalia spoke in hir tiny, piping voice, hir own presence was forgotten by humans, and humans attributed hir words to hir rider, regarding the hatchling hirself as being silent. A rider's dragon actually does speak and does so quite routinely or even exclusively, but humans never regard a dragon itself as having said a word, tending to remember the thoughts expressed as having come from the lips of its rider. This also is important for teaching discipline to dragons: since anything said by them is attributed to their riders, they understand even their thoughts as belonging to their riders. If someone says that a dragon has spoken, this rarely bodes well for the dragon.
To other dragons, though, rider and dragon are independent of each other. Therefore, while a human would only have recalled Michael as having spoken, Karyu understood that little Michael was really very cautious while Agalia seemed to be perfectly fearless. It was a privilege that he had that humans did not, to think of them separately.
“I wonder what is inside this one,” Agalia piped. The jars in Luke’s household were seldom labelled, his wife, Rebecca, knowing the contents of things by memory, but Agalia’s curiosity never ceased.
“I am not sure that we should,” Michael said skeptically, his hand hesitating as he looked inside the translucent brown jar. Tiny pellets were vaguely decipherable through the tint.
Karyu intervened on Michael’s side this time. “Those pellets are likely rat poison,” he said firmly. “I advise you guys putting it back where you found it.” As a dragon, Karyu only had a right to assert his views in such a way in order to avert an emergency, but this was precisely why Michael was quick to obey. Although no actual memories of why actually existed in his mind, he understood that not following the advice of his father’s dragon almost invariably would mean painful injuries or getting most amazingly sick. The jar was quickly put back in its place.
“I miss just being human and doing what I want,” Agalia pouted. “Being so little and helpless all the time is so weird. I wouldn’t have eaten that stuff, Michael. I promise. Rat poison is yucky green. Ewww!” Karyu suspected that Agalia would have whined, even if shi had always been a hatchling. Sie was quite spunky.
“You could still get in trouble then,” Michael said. “Remember how much trouble you got into playing with your mom’s pink glitter lipstick. She spanked you and took you to that weird preacher. I remember, even though that life is not real anymore.”
“And he showed me those GROSS pictures! Ewwww!” Agalia said, sticking out hir grayish-black tongue. “It’s just our luck that the cultists are even creepier. I can’t wait to be big enough to make cultist-KEBABS out of them.” Sie breathed a tiny gout of flame for emphasis.
Karyu closed his eyes and chuckled softly at the little vixen’s theatrics, his scarlet-red scaly forehead crinkling and his ear-crests wagging up and down. He heard something topple over as his tail struck something. It was a small end-table that just had some decorations and a couple of books on it, which scattered harmlessly.
“Michael, what are you doing in there?” Luke shouted from the other room.
“Everything is okay! I’ll pick it up!” Michael shouted. Outside of Karyu speaking up to avert injuries, Michael was considered the responsible party, even with Karyu, so while Michael picked up the mess, Karyu crouched submissively and thought guiltily on Michael having to go to such trouble. Humans bore the consequences for things and gave directions. How this realization was planted in his brain, he still couldn’t perceive.
Once the mess was cleaned up, though, Michael took Karyu by his foreleg, leading him toward the back door. “Dad, Mom, I am taking Karyu and going out to play.”
“Stay out of trouble, then,” Luke called. Even though the remark had been directed at Michael, Karyu understood that it meant being Luke’s extra set of eyes on his son, obeying the boy whenever it was clearly safe to do so but intervening as necessary.